


A Burden You Will Never Know

by adoxyinherear



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:26:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23709874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoxyinherear/pseuds/adoxyinherear
Summary: Sad and sexy times in the Fade. Sometime post-Tresspasser.
Relationships: Female Lavellan/Solas, Lavellan & Solas
Comments: 14
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

“And you’re sure it was him?”

“We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I weren’t.”

Leliana’s expression had darkened, and I feared what was coming even before she spoke again.

“Why would he risk exposing himself to you? That doesn’t even make sense,” she murmured, eyes soft as she retreated to whatever inner place allowed her to reason unreasonable behaviors. “We could use this to our advantage. We know what he’s planning, but not the details.”

I shook my head, miserable. My arm ached, a phantom pain that began where Solas had last touched me and extended to fingers his mark had devoured.

“He doesn’t come close, and every time I try to go to him, he retreats completely,” I said. What I didn’t say, but what Leliana certainly would have guessed, was that I’d stopped trying to go to him. I just waited, watching the play of light on his fur, imagining its warmth and the heat of the skin beneath.

“And he’s not spoken to you? Not once?”

“He’s a wolf, Leliana,” I insisted, but she didn’t seem to find that an impediment. Perhaps she’d spent too much time in Ferelden and absorbed their esteem of hounds.

“Tell me if you dream of him again. Anything you can remember.”

It wasn’t hard to keep my promise.

That night I walked in the Arbor Wilds, the sound of birds muted, a dappled path of light before me. It wasn’t like I remembered it, the greens too vivid, the flora impossibly lush. But it felt like it had when we’d camped before entering the Temple, when I’d walked barefoot under the canopy and inhaled the riot and rot of long undisturbed forest.

It was not long before I saw him, a flash of white between two trees in a copse ahead. I slowed but didn’t stop, reaching out to brush the low-hanging foliage before me aside with a hand I no longer possessed when awake. The leaves were glossy and smooth, sun-warmed, so real it hurt. I’d touched Solas in the Fade before, and knew that he would feel as real here as he did in life.

As I grew closer he remained equally distant, visible, but only just. While I didn’t share Leliana’s expectation that his appearing to me could somehow be exploited to our benefit, I was just as baffled as she was as to why he would be here at all. He’d made it clear in the ruins that he did not want my help and accepted that I would work against him. But he’d allowed me to live.

He’d made it possible for me to live.

“I have often thought on something you once said to Cole,” I said at last, voice pitched evenly. I sensed that he would hear me even if I whispered. “‘How small the pain of one man seems when weighed against the endless depths of memory.’ I wonder that you did not see that knowing less demands the heart feel more.”

I sat down between two great, smoothed roots, stretching my legs out in front of me.

“A single lifetime is a burden you will never know,” I continued, fighting the tremor that threatened my voice even here. “Not so for me, my love. I will age with empty years and memory my only comfort.”

I couldn’t see him now. Perhaps he fled from every attention, not just my attempts to seek him but my desire to draw him nearer, too. The Fade contracted around me, twilight encroaching where a moment ago I had walked in the blaze of day. My hands in my lap grew cool, curled around each other.

“That is not the life I want for you.”

My eyes snapped to focus on the figure that crouched before me just out of reach, not a wolf now but a lean, plainly-clothed figure so familiar my heart seemed to shrink and expand in the same instant. Want warred with wariness. 

Solas was looking at the ground. Perhaps he was telling himself that if he did not look, he would not be tempted. If he did not look, he wasn’t speaking with me, but with himself.

“What do you want for me?”

He had always responded best when questioned, when given a space to share what was in his heart.

Now Solas hesitated, three fingers of one hand braced against the soil, his heels dug in to stabilize him from tipping forward any closer to me than he already was. The forest’s cool light silvered his brow, the tips of his ears, the slope of his nose when he cocked his head slightly to one side, chin tilting up but still not enough to meet my eyes.

“Not this.”

Solas was not the wolf now but when he advanced on me, swift and sharp, there was something of the predator in his grace. His hands rushed from my ankles to my thighs, slipping from hips to back and pulling me under him with a strength I had tried and failed to make myself forget. He was hard against me and I trembled, wet and remembering everything, every touch, the times I had cried for more when he was still inside me and for anything at all when he had gone.

I didn’t dare meet his eyes, sure that it would break whatever spell had compelled him to touch me. Instead I shifted my hips against him and sought with my lips the sweet hollows of his neck, the scent just behind his ears. Solas cradled the back of my head with one strong hand even as the other traced reverently from breast to belly, drawing a map for his lips to follow. 

We said nothing, not as we touched each other, seeking familiar comforts, not when I bit out a scream against his shoulder and his nimble fingers retreated to make room for him to bury himself inside me. He balanced me on the edge of my desire, each thrust a push closer to the end of this world and a pull back to its beginning. He was so close and I was reeling. Taking his chin in my hands I forced him to look at me, felt myself breaking under the desperation and the love that I saw in his eyes.

“I didn’t want this for you,” Solas choked out, holding me tighter, his whole body seizing around mine. I knew even as he said it what he didn’t say, a truth only the Fade could reflect.

_I didn’t want this for me, either._

I wrapped my arms around Solas’ back, terrified that he would flee, a wild animal tempted but not tamed. Rocking together in the soil, his chest heaving against mine, the slick of his seed damp on my thighs, I wanted to weep. There was nothing I could think to say, nothing I could think to do, that didn’t risk breaking this moment between us.

But I dared, because I always did.

“You told Cole also that this was not a pain that he could heal,” I whispered. “If not Cole, then who?”

Solas shuddered against me, his hot breath in my hair already cooling.

“It cannot be you.”

“It can and I will.”

“ _Vhenan_.”

His voice was hardly more than a growl in the instant before he kissed me, drawing blood and stealing my breath. When he drew away I opened my eyes, because I would watch him go.

I would make him watch me watching him go, this time.


	2. Comfort in Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There is nothing you can learn from my mistakes, vhenan,” Solas murmured, and Lavellan’s eyes fluttered closed, willing herself to maintain the little distance he’d put between them.
> 
> “Just because you haven’t,” she insisted, “doesn’t mean I can’t.”
> 
> \--
> 
> I'm just gonna write these two dumb dreamers forever.

Lavellan dreamed of Skyhold the way she dreamt of the forests she traveled as a child: with a distant warmth, the smell of the stone not unlike the familiar odor of the halla or the herbs the Keeper burned on the fire to ensure clarity of mind. 

Though the ramparts were always empty, the practice yard and the gardens, too, they didn’t feel haunted. It always felt when she was dreaming that there was someone reading quietly around the corner, or perhaps only in a different part of the stronghold, seated in quiet contemplation.

She liked it that way. She would rather allow her dreaming mind to imagine that all was well, rather than the reality of being years removed from those comfortable hours at the height of the Inquisition’s power. 

Tonight she admired the view from the rookery, missing Leliana’s counsel and the few times she’d been able to catch the woman cooing to her birds. In the library, the shelves were populated exclusively, and inexplicably, with volumes of _Hard in Hightown_. 

Lavellan didn’t fool herself; she knew she was saving the rotunda for last before she woke up, knew there was no avoiding it. When she descended the stairs and stepped forward, she wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or terribly sad that the rotunda’s walls were blank. None of Solas’ work was represented, though his desk was there, scattered with blank papers and empty books. She ran a hand along its smoothed edge and felt instead the muscled plane of his chest, the skin smooth and taut over his breast bone. There was a time when she had teased Solas about the compulsion to stretch herself naked across his work to divert his attention, if only for a moment.

“I would only continue my writing,” he’d insisted, not looking at her. He’d smirked, though, a small and secret expression only she could see, seated on the low couch pushed against one wall.

And he’d brought a quill with him to her bed that night.

She lifted a single tome from the desk, rifling the blank pages. Leliana had secured all the papers and books Solas had left behind when he abandoned the Inquisition and Lavellan had read all of it, searching for answers, or maybe just a part of him hidden in his notes. She placed it back onto the desk with a sigh, but her breath wasn’t the only one she heard. Her eyes shot up to the scaffolding, a constant fixture in a castle forever under construction, and met eyes grey-blue as a cloudless sky.

Solas wore the simple clothing he’d worn during his time in the Inquisition and crouched on the scaffolding, hands braced against the rough wood planks. 

“It’s like you were never here,” she said, baiting him with her words and an expansive gesture. 

Expression muted, Solas only followed her hand with his eyes, taking in the bare rotunda walls. Had he not even noticed? Which meant he had been watching her.

Only her.

“But you were here,” she said softly, forcing herself to look away from him. When he appeared to her in dreams he was usually the wolf, distant and skittish, but when he wasn’t - that’s when she was most afraid. “And you’re here now. Why?”

He was silent a moment, no doubt weighing what he wanted to say, providing himself the opportunity to say nothing. 

“I don’t know where you are,” he admitted. Lavellan knew he meant where she really was - where she would wake up, when this stolen moment had passed. She smirked.

“The quality of your agents has diminished.”

“Or yours increased.”

It was a standoff between them, now that they were no longer lovers - and not really enemies, either. 

“Did you think I would tell you?”

Solas shook his head, the rest of his body poised still for flight.

“I thought you might dream of it.”

“You should know better than anyone the comforts I seek in dreams.”

Every time she saw him she felt the crack in her heart widen, a wound never healed, never scarred over, even. Just read and raw forever.

When he spoke again, she didn’t have to ask why he wanted to know to where she was or why he still cared. 

“I do.”

She braced both hands against his desk, each whole and the one she no longer possessed crackling with an energy she’d lost, too. But it was still inside her. His touch would always be inside of her.

“Come down here and I’ll give you a hint,” Lavellan murmured, voice low and heated through.

Something shifted in Solas’ expression, wary but hungry, too. 

“It wouldn’t be wise.”

“It hasn’t stopped us before.”

They both knew he didn’t only mean her providing him with intelligence. Still she could already see him retreating. It wasn’t physical, but his posture, the weight of his brow - he was going to leave, and soon.

“You’ve been there before,” she blurted out, daring to take a step around the desk, nearer the scaffolding. “I learned you shouldn’t have been. But it’s part of what drew me to the place - knowing it was the site of another of your mistakes.”

He could move so quickly in the Fade, a gift of his long years as a Dreamer, no doubt. It surprised her every time and this time, too, when he was no longer crouched above but suddenly only a hands-breadth away from her, limbs tense.

“There is nothing you can learn from my mistakes, vhenan,” Solas murmured, and Lavellan’s eyes fluttered closed, willing herself to maintain the little distance he’d put between them.

“Just because you haven’t,” she insisted, “doesn’t mean I can’t.”

His chuckle was short and soft and sad around the edges. It broke her wide open.

“Solas - ”

But he had her already, hands like jaws, the grip of his fingers on her back, her hip, like the exquisite pressure of teeth. His mouth was infinitely sweeter but no less starved. 

Lavellan could’ve given in, felt herself already shrugging out of her tunic, but his touch was softening - diminishing.

Her eyes snapped open, enough to capture his pained expression, his sorrow and his want, as she was pulled from sleep.


	3. A War on Two Fronts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I might be a Solas apologist but that's only because I think he'll deliver on the apology he totally knows he owes.

There was a moment when she almost pinched herself, blinking rapidly to be sure that she was awake. But this wasn’t the Fade, wasn’t a battlefield conjured by her war-anxious mind. There was blood on her hands, in her hair; her eyes watered from the smoke of scorched bodies and her ears were ringing. 

And Solas stood before her, far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to reach him with a spell of her own but near enough that she could not mistake his silhouette in the twilight.

“I could kill you right now,” she whispered, voice trembling and her hands, too, as she took an involuntary step back, clutching her staff. She knew that he could hear her. She only hoped that he could also hear the tremor that betrayed her feelings - it wasn’t only that she could, but that she _ might _ , that frightened her.

“I know, vhenan.”

Solas’ words were soft, a breath of ice cooling her furious heart. He didn’t move, the sheen of his armor dulled with ash and dirt and old blood. When they couldn’t avoid his agents they killed them, but only as a last resort. And now he was here, where he wasn’t supposed to be. 

But this was always his game, wasn’t it? Solas had made it clear that she was the interloper - that the only way he could continue to play was to refuse to allow her to change the rules.

Even after he’d admitted she already had.

“You are alone,” she observed, a sinister edge to the words when she considered his comrades fallen before them.

“So are you.”

“Not for long,” she warned. His forces might have bested the scouting party she’d gotten this far with, but Leliana had eyes on every skirmish. “Why are you here?”

“Do you remember when the Chantry refused to see reason and would not stand with us against the breach?”

“I do.”

Even his breath seemed careful. He had not moved, but he was staring at her now, demanding her eyes. It was a look that threatened to unravel her, years removed now from the last time he had pinned her with that gaze.

Since he had last pinned her against a crumbling wall in Skyhold and she’d felt the beat of his heart against her breast. 

“We have a common enemy,” Solas admitted, lacing his hands together around his staff. “I would rather see us united against what threatens us both than the alternative.”

“Which is what?”

His quartz-blue eyes remained fixed on hers, and now he dared a step closer. She couldn’t move, a hare trapped deciding which direction to run. 

“You are killed attempting to fight a war on two fronts.”

“Both wars need fighting.”

“Vhenan,” Solas murmured, and he might’ve been close enough to brush her cheek with the words, for how it felt. “There are many ways that this could end, and I would see you live to the very last.”

Her eyes fluttered closed without her consent, lost in memory and wanting. When she spoke again, she kept them shut, unwilling to see how her words would alter his expression - or not.

“You would have me cradle a broken world or your broken body, you mean. That is the only way I can see this ending.”

“Tell me you do not want what I want and I will never ask again.”

Solas was upon her now, predator-quick, his body obscuring the last of the sun’s light and swallowing her in shadow. His words were ragged. When she opened her eyes his were fathoms-deep with sadness. 

Like he already guessed her answer. 

Like he had been waiting for it to crush him for a thousand years.

“You are not the only one who is afraid,” she said, gripping her staff to keep from reaching for him, the wood unyielding. “I have accepted that we might lose. But I can’t accept - I won’t accept - that it will be because I let my heart command me.”

She meant to turn, to leave him with blood on his boots and anguish in his eyes, but he dropped his staff and took her by the arms. Lightning crackled in the hand he had left her but did not arc toward him.

“Then let it command me, vhenan,” he begged. She was reminded of the grove in Crestwood, how she had railed at him, how he had let her. She’d hated every excuse; she’d hated him. Was it bravery or stupidity that made her waver now?

Solas’ forehead touched against hers, cool and firm and intimate, the moment held like a breath between them. When he spoke again, his words were like an open wound.

“I am ready to be wrong.”

Her heart, tight and small and hardened by all that had transpired, softened. Years ago she might have teased him.  _ And I’m always right _ , she might’ve said. But too much had happened for words to be wasted between them and when she opened her mouth, all that escaped was a sob. 

And then his arms were around her, warm with the memory of every embrace they’d shared. She could not shake apart from crying with his hands to steady her, could not doubt him with the steady heat of his flesh under her fingertips. She touched his neck, his jaw, his lips and eyelids, and she wept because he was real.

She kept weeping even when he kissed her, sweet and deep as a promise, because she had to believe it would not be the last time. 


End file.
